Random Hearts

by Warren Adler

  "I wasn't boring. I never felt boring."

  "I didn't say you were."

  "I was efficient, devoted, loyal and, yes, loving."

  "So was I. You don't marry somebody for entertainment." Again, she felt the heat of her anger.

  "I know that." He must have seen the rage rising, for his voice was lower, placating.

  "When you describe it honestly, it does sound uninteresting. But it goes deeper than that. You're together to do a life, to make a family, to offer emotional support. Maybe we didn't discuss politics or art or movies or television or his law business. Not everything that passes between a husband and wife falls into a category. I mean, if he had a headache and complained about it and I gave him an aspirin, what would that come under? Nursing?"

  "Vivien, really..."

  "And what about support? Plain old-fashioned prop-up support. The kind that lifts you when you're down and joins the cheering section when you're up. I've done my share of both, but I can't count that under any category either."

  "Really, Viv, I hadn't meant..."

  But she was deep into it now, unstoppable.

  "No. I didn't have any special interests outside of Orson and Ben. I didn't have hobbies. I didn't join clubs. You might say I was an outsider in a way, which might have made me somewhat dull, although I never thought of myself as dull. This was a part of my life reserved for wifing and motherhood. I can't help the biological clock. Some women just breeze through it happily. I thought I was one of those." For a moment she waffled; a wave of self-pity crested, broke, then went past her. Still her anger was not fully vented. She tried to penetrate the shadows between them.

  "I know what you're really after." She grew suddenly cautious, then angry again. "Men and their ... their things. That's the standard for everything. You want to know about our sex life."

  "It's just one factor. A piece of the puzzle, I suppose."

  "I never once refused him. Not once. Pallid, placid little Vivien. Always available. Only he wasn't too peachy keen most of the time. He wasn't always, as they say, hot to trot. I suppose you can blame me for that as well." She paused, feeling a sly malevolence rise inside her. "I'd like to know more about your little woman. Did you move the earth for her?"

  "No, I didn't," he said, "if that's what you want to know."

  His answer calmed her. There was no mistaking his sad regret. Wasn't it, after all, a prime measure of manhood to be capable of giving a woman satisfaction? Or was that another old-fashioned shibboleth to keep women lying, faking passion? As she did. What bothered her most was the indelicate way in which men treated the process, the act. Orson was, at first, gentle, caring. It was lovely to nestle in his arms, to feel him deep inside her. Something had changed later. In him? Or her? She couldn't be sure. Nevertheless, the exchange of flesh was still an act of faith between them, a renewal of the bond. Did it always have to be measured in ecstatic pleasure?

  Perhaps it was futile to berate this man, torture him further. It may be, she thought, that the chasm of understanding between men and women was simply impossible to bridge. Reaching over the space between the beds, she touched his arm.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "Maybe it's also a category. Classify it as blowing off steam. I never did with Orson."

  "Maybe you should have."

  All anger had seeped away.

  "There was just nothing to fight about. Or I didn't see it. Funny, how much more aware I am now. A little late. Too soon old und too late shmart, as the Pennsylvania Dutch say."

  In the darkness she felt the grip of strong fingers on her hand. With his other hand he was stroking her arm, and her skin broke into goose bumps. But she did not pull away. He moved across the space to her bed and held her. She felt the warmth of his flesh against hers, her nipples hardening against his bare chest. His arms encircled her, and she brought hers around him, stroking his back and shoulders. He was trembling.

  "What is it?" she whispered.

  "I don't really know."

  Her fingers stroked the nape of his neck, and his reached into her hair. Shivers shot through her. The inevitable comparison surfaced in her mind, the different touch, the different aroma, the softer body. His hands fondled her breasts. Was he, too, inspecting, comparing? She desperately wanted to know what was going through his mind at precisely this moment. If she asked, would she get a truly honest answer? She did not ask. In men, sex seemed an imperative, an uncontrollable urgency. At this point Orson would be spearing into her, beginning the inevitable primal stroke.

  They stretched out on the single bed. Holding her gently, he made no move to enter; his hands gently explored, as if he were frightened her flesh might tear at the slightest movement. She held him, caressing him as if he were a small boy. Like Ben, she thought. When she kissed him, his lips were firm and warm, his probing tongue gentle and caressing.

  Often with Orson she had concentrated with all the power of some inner force, waiting for the signals to begin of the ecstasy that rarely came. Yet with quiet, enduring patience, she had listened for his impending shudder, anticipated by a storm of shortened breaths and heated flesh, as he moved with relentless energy to what she assumed was the imperative moment of joy. Always, it was mysterious, a ferocious, private, male experience. Sometimes, when he had rolled off her and his steady breathing indicated that he had slipped into an alien world she wondered if what had occurred had anything at all to do with her.

  Now she felt that her mind and body were opening to some new knowledge over some path bushwhacked out of tangled jungle. Edward's hand stroked, his fingers probed as she opened to him. She could feel the blood coursing through her body as she explored him, touching the hard male part of him, the silken skin, and feeling his quickening heart. For long moments he ceased to move, suspended in space and time, letting her caress him until his own rhythmical movement began and she became the caressed.

  In him she felt none of Orson's urgency, none of the domination. A pact of equals, she decided, as they held each other without discomfort in the narrow single bed, their bodies adjusting, fitting together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle of a barely comprehensible picture. It was, surprisingly, she who took the initiative, drawing him into her, deep inside, holding him there as the intensity of her need erupted.

  She had not looked for signals, and when they came, they startled her. She felt gripped by a powerful inner hysteria to which her body surrendered, frenzied, mindless. Yet she knew that wherever it took her, he was there with her, she was not alone. He was reacting to her and with her. She let it happen, floating in its moist vortex, abandoning herself to wave after wave of pleasure, sure that his body was responding in kind.

  It took a long time for them to quiet down. When he started to speak, her fingers reached out and touched his lips.

  "No."

  She wanted no explanations, no post mortems, no excruciating analysis, no rationalizations, no deductions. Why had this happened with Edward and never with Orson? She was afraid to know, afraid that, whatever it was, knowledge would diminish it, make it disappear. Something had changed inside her, and it would reveal itself soon enough, she decided.

  30

  Edward shared her fear. Emotional scrutiny, translated into words, had the power to distort perceptions. Wasn't it enough to feel? To be moved? Talk might change the delicate calibration. Go with it, his mind told him.

  It was as if Vivien had probed deep inside him, found something that belonged to her in his heart and he had urged her to take it. He knew that it was not a one-way transaction, but he dared not inquire; he was fearful that what he had from her was stolen, not freely given.

  Whatever it was, he would not give it a name, would not hold it up for identification. Neither did he want it labeled or defined. Giving it a name would either trivialize it or, worse, put it in the category of aberration.

  For three weeks their actions held to an unvarying pattern. It proceeded, naturally, by silent mutual consent. They would rise early, always a joyo
us awakening for him, locked in each other's arms. Awake first, he would gently kiss her closed eyes and feel the tickling flutter of her lashes. Then her lips would nuzzle his face, her knowing fingers would roam his flesh as his caressed, searching for the triggers of her special joy. Soon they pursued each other with frantic abandon. Each final phase, when their bodies closed in the primal embrace, was a restatement of their passion, a celebration of ultimate joys and fulfillment.

  Yet when they stepped out of bed, it was as if they had entered into an untracked void, an environment of menace and danger. It was that sense of infinite uncertainty that gave meaning to their search. It took on a mystical aspect, like the hunt for the holy grail which would miraculously unlock the secret of life. Without knowing, without finding, nothing between these two separate aspects of their lives would ever connect.

  At breakfast they studiously avoided the subject of themselves. Yet they watched each other, like animals circling with wary inspection, always with caution.

  When they talked, it was with measured words, with the focus always on their objective as if that other part of their lives did not exist. They drove from apartment building to apartment building, following the relentness preconceived pattern, never varying, writing down each building that used Yale locks. Paradoxically, each notation somehow seemed a diminishment of themselves, generating an awesome, all-encompassing fear that, once it was found, exorcism would be achieved, and there would no longer be anything to hold them together—like being between the devil and the deep blue sea.

  Compulsively, they persisted in questioning each other about the other life, as if it might hurry the process of understanding. Lily. Orson. Memory became more clinical, less visceral, and oddly repetitive. In the end, comparing their marriages was like comparing different kinds of apples. They were similiar in taste and texture, but decidedly different.

  When they did not eat at the little Italian restaurant in McLean, they ate at Vivien's house. Neither would dare suggest varying the routine.

  By the end of the three weeks they each knew more than they might have wished about the material facts of each of their former spouses. Yet they continued to probe, both of them knowing that the real mystery remained, the ultimate questions were unanswered: Why had they been betrayed? Why had they been unable to detect it? Why had they married who they married? In the evening after dinner they went up to the guest room and made love. Quickly, along with their clothes and inhibitions, they shed all the formalities and insecurities of their other life. Flesh was their medium of communication. It was like living life in a euphoric limbo. Except for the fear of its ending abruptly one day, being with her in this way was the closest thing to paradise he could imagine.

  At times there were intrusions, which heightened their fears. Her parents called more often from Vermont. When was she coming for Ben? Soon, Mama. But when? Soon. It was another thing not to be discussed. Dale Martin, too, called often about the insurance, trying to talk her out of her decision. That pressure was more easily deflected. Once the lady from the farm where Hamster was boarded called.

  "We're not having too much luck."

  "Keep trying," Vivien said. "I'll send another check." It occurred to her that it might be better to put Hamster to sleep, but she did not press the point. Not yet. Soon.

  It became apparent that "soon" was an answer applicable to everything, the ultimate tentative. Even for Edward.

  "When do you think we'll have the information we need to begin to check the keys?" she asked.

  "Soon," he told her, looking at the map.

  He hoped soon meant never. Another question begged an answer from her, but he would not ask it because its meaning had been distorted by their experience. Do you love me? And if she said yes, would it have any meaning at all? And if it were no? It comforted him to know that either answer would ring hollow and untrue. Why then was it important to know?

  When the backlog of other questions became too much to bear, he had only to look at her, feel the quickening of his pulse beat, sense the enormity of her power over him. At night, in the narrow bed, holding her, embracing, caressing, merging into the oneness of a single being, all questions disappeared. All doubts fled. All fears subsided.

  Practical considerations became vague and less defined as each day passed. Such mundane items as money had little impact on them. He had filled out a forwarding card at the post office and had received his severance check, which he had cashed, adding the money to the pile that was in the top drawer of the guest room dresser. They made no attempt to separate the monies, taking only what they needed. Whatever bill came, she paid by money order.

  They were always within earshot, if not within visual communication. Mostly, they were within touching distance. And their eyes locked often. They allowed themselves only a single outward symbol of tender sentiment. Every few days he would buy her a fresh single tiny rose for the bud vase. "Must never let one die there," he told her. "Never."

  Their universe had narrowed to the sparest economy of space. They moved in four rooms: kitchen, bathroom, living room, and guest room, where the space further narrowed to a single bed, one dresser, and one closet. Where it was possible, doors closed off other rooms, like the master bedroom and Ben's room. They rarely used the den, Orson's place, except to pass through, but only when necessary.

  They sat close together in the car. He usually drove, and they weaved through traffic with no sense of the pressure of time or annoyance.

  When the dreaded intrusion came, he rejected it at first as an illusion. Then it became undeniable.

  They were being followed.

  He did not have to formally transmit the apprehension. In their state of heightened awareness, nothing untoward could be hidden from one another. It had happened at the beginning of the fourth week, in the morning. He had been conscious of the car following almost from the moment he had left her street. His eyes kept darting into the rearview mirror, then shifting to the side mirror. She had turned in her seat as he swung the car into turns, up side streets, and parked in the lot of a shopping center.

  Two men were inside the car, and they stuck to the trail with dogged tenacity.

  "What do you think?" she asked.

  His immediate thought was Vinnie.

  "I'm not sure."

  More than simply danger, it triggered in both of them the fear of the real enemy ... change. She had moved closer to him on the seat, her hand gripping his thigh.

  For the rest of the day they continued as they normally did, checking apartment houses, making notes. In the evening they came home and peered out the front windows of the darkened house. The car was there, hidden beyond the lighted circles of the street lamps.

  "See that?" he whispered, spotting the sudden glow of a cigarette's ash.

  "But who? And why?"

  He could not give her an adequate answer.

  He remembered what the Congressman had asked: "Is he Mafia?" The idea had been patently absurd at the time. Now he wasn't so sure. Vinnie had enough hatred in him to kill. Or to arrange a killing. It was far afield from his experience, but surely possible.

  They went to bed and clung to each other, and although they made love, which moved them both as before, he felt that the pattern of their special existence had been tampered with. In the middle of the night he rose and went downstairs to look out the window again.

  "Still there?"

  She had followed him down.

  "Still there."

  In bed again, he felt her trembling. She lay with her head in the crook of his arm, and he stroked her hair, wondering if this meant the beginning of the end. Embracing, they drifted into sleep.

  The phone woke them. Another intrusion. Their eyes opened instantly, but neither of them made a move to answer it. Nothing that came from outside their world could be the harbinger of good. That was one deduction that did not require words to define. But the ring persisted. Finally, it was he who picked up the instrument.

  "Davis?"


  The sound of his name startled him. Who could know he was here? How could they know?

  "It's McCarthy."

  "You."

  He looked at Vivien, whose frown mirrored his confusion.

  "It isn't my fault. I'm really sorry about it. But you see, it had to be put into the records. The thing about the pregnancy, too."

  "You're not making yourself clear."

  His last view of McCarthy resurfaced in his memory: sour smelling, stinking drunk, his features distorted by some secret anger. To Edward, he was running true to form as the bearer of bad tidings.

  "They're investigating certain aspects of the crash," McCarthy continued, his voice transmitting his resignation. "It's all very complicated. There are a million details to be checked out."

  The crash? What has all this got to do with us? Edward wondered. Not now.

  "There was no way to hold anything back. Not from them. Not that there is any hard evidence about anything."

  "Really, McCarthy..."

  He wanted to protest this intrusion, invoke invasion of privacy legalities.

  "I'll find a way to make it up to you."

  "Make it up? For what, for crying out loud?"

  His voice sounded ominous, and his hand gripped Vivien's shoulder.

  "The FBI. In a crash of this magnitude"—official jargon crept into his voice—"every facet must be investigated. Since identification was my official responsibility in connection with your respective spouses, I had to give them everything. Everything. They know everything."

  "Everything?" Who could know everything? he thought facetiously.

  "So they'll be around. I'm just calling to sort of alert you so you'll keep cool, that's all."

  "They think we had something to do with the crash?"

  Vivien rose on one elbow, watching his face in horror.

  "They have to consider the possibility. Just tell them the truth."

  "We don't know the truth," he sputtered. That's just the point, he thought.

  "If it means anything, I told them they were barking up the wrong tree."